Chapter 4 society and social interaction

Sociology
CHAPTER 4-SOCIETY AND SOCIAL INTERACTION
Prof.Dr. Halit Hami ÖZ
Kafkas Üniversitesi/Kafkas University
Kars, Turkey
hamioz@yahoo.com

Learning Objectives
 Learning Objectives

 4.1. Types of Societies
 · Describe the difference between pre-industrial, industrial, and postindustrial
societies
 · Understand the role of environment on preindustrial societies
 · Understand how technology impacts societal development
 4.2. Theoretical Perspectives on Society
 · Describe Durkhiem’s functionalist view of society
 · Understand the conflict theorist view of society
 · Explain Marx’s concepts of class and alienation
 · Identify how symbolic interactionists understand society
 4.3. Social Constructions of Reality
 · Understand the sociological concept of reality as a social construct
 · Define roles and describe their place in people’s daily interactions
 · Explain how individuals present themselves and perceive themselves in a social
context
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 Early in the morning, a group of male warriors creeps out of the
village and heads for the savannah.
 They must be careful not to wake the other members of the tribe,
lest they be accosted by the women or elders.
 Once they have regrouped on the plains, the warriors begin
preparing for the hunt.
 The eldest members of the group choose the most qualified hunters,
known as ilmeluaya, meaning men who are not afraid of death.
Warriors who are not selected are sent home in shame.

 Once the select group has been chosen, the warriors begin the hunt.
They scour the plains for footprints or droppings, and search for
dense bushes or tall termite mounds that might conceal their resting
prey. The search can take ten minutes to ten hours, but once a lion
is found, the warriors quickly move into place.

 Selected hunters ring bells and rattle the brush, forcing the
lion away from its protected hiding spot. The goal is to face
the beast one-on-one on the open savannah. There will be no
tricks or cheating, simply warrior against warrior. If all goes as
planned, the lion will be brought down with a single spear.
 When the warriors return to the village with their trophy, it is
the beginning of a weeklong celebration. Although the hunt
must be planned in secret, news of the warriors’ success
spreads quickly, and all village members come to
congratulate the victors.
 The warrior who wounded the lion first is honored and given a
nickname based on his accomplishment. Songs are sung
about the warrior, and from now on he will be remembered
and acknowledged throughout the community, even among
other tribes.

 To the Maasai, lion hunting is about more than
food and security. It is a way to strengthen the
bonds of community and the hierarchy among
the hunters.
 Disputes over power are settled before the hunt,
and roles are reinforced at the end, with the
bravest warrior receiving the lion’s tail as a trophy
(Maasai Association 2011).
 Although Maasai society is very different from
contemporary America, both share the human
need to cooperate and live together in order to
survive.

 Maasai villagers, Tehranians, Americans—each is a society.
 But what does this mean?
 Exactly what is a society?
 In sociological terms, society refers to a group of people
who live in a definable community and share the same
culture.
 On a broader scale, society consists of the people and
institutions around us, our shared beliefs, and our cultural
ideas.
 Typically, more advanced societies also share a political
authority.

 Sociologist Gerhard Lenski (1924–) defined societies in
terms of their technological sophistication.
 As a society advances, so does its use of technology.
 Societies with rudimentary technology depend on the
fluctuations of their environment, while industrialized
societies have more control over the impact of their
surroundings and thus develop different cultural
features.
 This distinction is so important that sociologists
generally classify societies along a spectrum of their
level of industrialization, from preindustrial to
industrial to postindustrial.

Preindustrial Societies
 Before the Industrial Revolution and the
widespread use of machines, societies
were small, rural, and dependent largely
on local resources.
 Economic production was limited to the
amount of labor a human being could
provide, and there were few specialized
occupations.
 The very first occupation was that of
hunter-gatherer.

Hunter-Gatherer
 Hunter-gatherer societies demonstrate the strongest dependence
on the environment of the various types of preindustrial societies.
 As the basic structure of human society until about 10,000–12,000
years ago, these groups were based around kinship or tribes.
 Hunter-gatherers relied on their surroundings for survival—they
hunted wild animals and foraged for uncultivated plants for food.
 When resources became scarce, the group moved to a new area to
find sustenance, meaning they were nomadic.
 These societies were common until several hundred years ago, but
today only a few hundred remain in existence, such as indigenous
Australian tribes sometimes referred to as “aborigines,” or the
Bambuti, a group of pygmy hunter-gatherers residing in the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
 Hunter-gatherer groups are quickly disappearing as the world’s
population explodes.

Pastoral
 Changing conditions and adaptations led some societies to rely on the
domestication of animals where circumstances permitted.
 Roughly 7,500 years ago, human societies began to recognize their ability to tame
and breed animals and to grow and cultivate their own plants.
 Pastoral societies rely on the domestication of animals as a resource for
survival.
 Unlike earlier hunter-gatherers who depended entirely on existing resources to
stay alive, pastoral groups were able to breed livestock for food, clothing, and
transportation, creating a surplus of goods.
 Herding, or pastoral, societies remained nomadic because they were forced to
follow their animals to fresh feeding grounds.
 Around the time that pastoral societies emerged, specialized occupations began
to develop, and societies commenced trading with local groups.

Horticultural
 Around the same time that pastoral societies were on the rise,
another type of society developed, based on the newly developed
capacity for people to grow and cultivate plants.
 Previously, the depletion of a region’s crops or water supply forced
pastoral societies to relocate in search of food sources for their
livestock.
 Horticultural societies formed in areas where rainfall and other
conditions allowed them to grow stable crops.
 They were similar to hunter-gatherers in that they largely depended
on the
environment for survival, but since they didn’t have to abandon their
location to follow resources, they were able to start permanent
settlements.
 This created more stability and more material goods and became
the basis for the first revolution in human survival.

Agricultural

 While pastoral and horticultural societies used small, temporary tools
such as digging sticks or hoes, agricultural societies relied on
permanent tools for survival.
 Around 3000 B.C.E., an explosion of new technology known as the
Agricultural Revolution made farming possible—and profitable.
 Farmers learned to rotate the types of crops grown on their fields
and to reuse waste products such as fertilizer, leading to better
harvests and bigger surpluses of food.
 New tools for digging and harvesting were made of metal, making
them more effective and longer lasting.
 Human settlements grew into towns and cities, and particularly
bountiful regions became centers of trade and commerce.

Feudal
 The ninth century gave rise to feudal societies.
 These societies contained a strict hierarchical system of power based around land
ownership and protection.
 The nobility, known as lords, placed vassals in charge of pieces of land. In return
for the resources that the land provided, vassals promised to fight for their lords.

 These individual pieces of land, known as fiefdoms, were cultivated by the lower
class.
 In return for maintaining the land, peasants were guaranteed a place to live and
protection from outside enemies.
 Power was handed down through family lines, with peasant families serving lords
for generations and generations.
 Ultimately, the social and economic system of feudalism would fail, replaced by
capitalism and the technological advances of the industrial era.

Industrial Society
 Steam power began appearing everywhere. Instead of
paying artisans to painstakingly spin wool and weave it
into cloth, people turned to textile mills that produced
fabric quickly at a better price, and often with better
quality.
 Rather than planting and harvesting fields by hand,
farmers were able to purchase mechanical seeders and
threshing machines that caused agricultural productivity
to soar.
 Products such as paper and glass became available to
the average person, and the quality and accessibility of
education and health care soared.
 Gas lights allowed increased visibility in the dark, and
towns and cities developed a nightlife.Download for free at

Industrial Society
 One of the results of increased productivity and
technology was the rise of urban centers.
 Workers flocked to factories for jobs, and the
populations of cities became increasingly diverse.
 The new generation became less preoccupied with
maintaining family land and traditions, and more
focused on acquiring wealth and achieving upward
mobility for themselves and their family.
 People wanted their children and their children’s
children to continue to rise to the top, and as capitalism
increased, so did social mobility.

Industrial Society
 It was during this time that power moved from the hands of
the aristocracy and “old money” to business-savvy
newcomers who amassed fortunes in their lifetimes.
 Families such as the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts
became the new power players, using their influence in
business to control aspects of government as well.
 Eventually, concerns over the exploitation of workers led to
the formation of labor unions and laws that set mandatory
conditions for employees.
 Although the introduction of new technology at the end of the
19th century ended the industrial age, much of our social
structure and social ideas—like family, childhood, and time
standardization—have a basis in industrial society

Postindustrial Society
 Information societies, sometimes known as postindustrial or digital societies, are
a recent development. Unlike industrial societies that are rooted in the production
of material goods, information societies are based on the production of information
and services.

 Digital technology is the steam engine of information societies, and computer
moguls such as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are its John D. Rockefellers and
Cornelius Vanderbilts.
 Since the economy of information societies is driven by knowledge and not
material goods, power lies with those in charge of storing and distributing
information.
 Members of a postindustrial society are likely to be employed as sellers of
services—software programmers or business consultants, for example—instead
of producers of goods.
 Social classes are divided by access to education, since without technical skills,
people in an information society lack the means for success.

4.2 Theoretical Perspectives
on Society
 While many sociologists have contributed to
research on society and social interaction,
three thinkers form the base of modern-day
perspectives.
 Émile Durkheim,
 Karl Marx, and
 Max Weber
 developed different theoretical approaches to
help us understand the way societies
function.

Émile Durkheim and
Functionalism
 As a functionalist, Émile Durkheim’s (1858–1917) perspective on society stressed
the necessary interconnectivity of all of its elements.
 To Durkheim, society was greater than the sum of its parts. He asserted that
individual behavior was not the same as collective behavior, and that studying
collective behavior was quite different from studying an individual’s actions.
 Durkheim called the communal beliefs, morals, and attitudes of a society the
collective conscience.
 In his quest to understand what causes individuals to act in similar and predictable
ways, he wrote, “If I do not submit to the conventions of society, if in my dress I do
not conform to the customs observed in my country and in my class, the ridicule I
provoke, the social isolation in which I am kept, produce, although in an
attenuated form, the same effects as punishment” (Durkheim 1895).
 Durkheim also believed that social integration,or the strength of ties that people
have to their social groups, was a key factor in social life.

Émile Durkheim and
Functionalism
 Following the ideas of Comte and Spencer, Durkheim likened
society to that of a living organism, in which each organ plays
a necessary role in keeping the being alive.
 Even the socially deviant members of society are necessary,
Durkheim argued, as punishments for deviance affirm
established cultural values and norms.
 That is, punishment of a crime reaffirms our moral
consciousness. “A crime is a crime because we condemn it,”
Durkheim wrote in 1893. “An act offends the common
consciousness not because it is criminal, but it is criminal
because it offends that consciousness” (Durkheim 1893).
 Durkheim called these elements of society “social facts.” By
this, he meant that social forces were to be considered real
and existed outside the individual.

Émile Durkheim and
Functionalism
 Pre-industrial societies, Durkheim explained, were held
together by mechanical solidarity, a type of social
order maintained by the collective consciousness of a
culture.
 Societies with mechanical solidarity act in a mechanical
fashion; things are done mostly because they have
always been done that way.
 This type of thinking was common in preindustrial
societies where strong bonds of kinship and a low
division of labor created shared morals and values
among people, such as hunter-gatherer groups.
 When people tend to do the same type of work,
Durkheim argued, they tend to think and act alike.

Émile Durkheim and
Functionalism
 In industrial societies, mechanical solidarity is replaced
with organic solidarity, social order based around an
acceptance of economic and social differences.
 In capitalist societies, Durkheim wrote, division of labor
becomes so specialized that everyone is doing different
things.
 Instead of punishing members of a society for failure to
assimilate to common values, organic solidarity allows
people with differing values to coexist.
 Laws exist as formalized morals and are based on
restitution rather than revenge.

Émile Durkheim and
Functionalism
 While the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity is, in the long run, advantageous for
a society, Durkheim noted that it can be a time of chaos and “normlessness.”
 One of the outcomes of the transition is something he called social anomie.
 Anomie—literally, “without law”—is a situation in which society no longer has the support of a
firm collective consciousness.
 Collective norms are weakened.
 People, while more interdependent to accomplish complex tasks, are also alienated
from each other.
 Anomie is experienced in times of social uncertainty, such as war, or a great upturn or
downturn in the economy.
 As societies reach an advanced stage of organic solidarity, they avoid anomie by redeveloping
a set of shared norms.
 According to Durkheim, once a society achieves organic solidarity, it has finished its
development.

Karl Marx and Conflict Theory
 Karl Marx (1818–1883) is certainly among the most
significant social thinkers in recent history.
 While there are many critics of his work, it is still widely
respected and influential.
 For Marx, society’s constructions were predicated upon
the idea of “base and superstructure.”
 This term refers to the idea that a society’s economic
character forms its base, upon which rests the culture
and social institutions, the superstructure.
 For Marx, it is the base (economy) that determines what
a society will be like.

 Additionally, Marx saw conflict in
society as the primary means of
change.
 Economically, he saw conflict existing
between the owners of the means of
production—the bourgeoisie—and
the laborers, called the proletariat.

 Marx maintained that these conflicts appeared consistently
throughout history during times of social revolution.
 These revolutions or “class antagonisms” as he called them,
were a result of one class dominating another.
 Most recently, with the end of feudalism, a new revolutionary
class he called the bourgeoisie dominated the proletariat
laborers.
 The bourgeoisie were revolutionary in the sense that they
represented a radical change in the structure of society.
 In Marx’s words, “Society as a whole is more and more
splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great
classes directly facing each other—Bourgeoisie and
Proletariat” (Marx and Engels 1848).

 For Marx, what we do defines who we are. In historical
terms, in spite of the persistent nature of one class
dominating another, some element of humanity existed.
 There was at least some connection between the
worker and the product, augmented by the natural
conditions of seasons and the rise and fall of the sun,
such as we see in an agricultural society.
 But with the bourgeoisie revolution and the rise of
industry and capitalism, the worker now worked for
wages alone.
 His relationship to his efforts was no longer of a human
nature, but based on artificial conditions.

 Marx described modern society in
terms of alienation.
 Alienation refers to the condition in
which the individual is isolated and
divorced from his or her society, work,
or the sense of self.
 Marx defined four specific types of
alienation.

 Alienation from the product of one’s labor.An industrial worker
does not have the opportunity to relate to the product he is laboring
on.
 Instead of training for years as a watchmaker, an unskilled worker
can get a job at a watch factory pressing buttons to seal pieces
together.
 The worker does not care if he is making watches or cars, simply
that the job exists.
 In the same way, a worker may not even know or care what product
he is contributing to.
 A worker on a Ford assembly line may spend all day installing
windows on car doors without ever seeing the rest of the car.
 A cannery worker can spend a lifetime cleaning fish without ever
knowing what product they are used for

 Alienation from the process of one’s labor. A worker does not
control the conditions of her job because she does not own the
means of production.
 If a person is hired to work in a fast food restaurant, she is expected
to make the food the way she is taught.
 All ingredients must be combined in a particular order and in a
particular quantity; there is no room for creativity or change.
 An employee at Burger King cannot decide to change the spices
used on the fries in the same way that an employee on a Ford
assembly line cannot decide to place a car’s headlights in a different
position.
 Everything is decided by the bourgeoisie who then dictate orders to
the laborers

 Alienation from others. Workers compete, rather than
cooperate.
 Employees vie for time slots, bonuses, and job security.
 Even when a worker clocks out at night and goes home,
the competition does not end.
 As Marx commented in The Communist
Manifesto(1848), “No sooner is the exploitation of the
laborer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he
receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the
other portion of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the
shopkeeper, the pawnbroker.”

 Alienation from one’s self. A final outcome of industrialization is a loss of
connectivity between a worker and her occupation.
 Because there is nothing that ties a worker to her labor, there is no longer a sense
of self.
 Instead of being able to take pride in an identity such as being a watchmaker,
automobile builder, or chef, a person is simply a cog in the machine.

 Taken as a whole, then, alienation in modern society means that an individual has
no control over his life.
 Even in feudal societies, a person controlled the manner of his labor as to when
and how it was carried out.
 But why, then, does the modern working class not rise up and rebel? (Indeed,
Marx predicted that this would be the ultimate outcome and collapse of
capitalism.)

 Another idea that Marx developed is the concept of false
consciousness.
 False consciousness is a condition in which the beliefs,
ideals, or ideology of a person are not in the person’s own
best interest.
 In fact, it is the ideology of the dominant class (here, the
bourgeoisie capitalists) that is imposed upon the proletariat.
 Ideas such as the emphasis of competition over cooperation,
or of hard work being its own reward, clearly benefit the
owners of industry.
 Therefore, workers are less likely to question their place in
society and assume individual responsibility for existing
conditions

 In order for society to overcome false consciousness,
Marx proposed that it be replaced with class
consciousness, the awareness of one’s rank in
society.
 Instead of existing as a “class in itself,” the proletariat
must become a “class for itself” in order to produce
social change (Marx and Engels 1848), meaning that
instead of just being an inert strata of society, the class
could become an advocate for social improvements.
 Only once society entered this state of political
consciousness would it be ready for a social revolution.

Max Weber and Symbolic Interactionism
 Weber’s primary focus on the structure of society lay in
the elements of class, status, and power.
 Similar to Marx, Weber saw class as economically
determined.
 Society, he believed, was split between owners and
laborers.
 Status, on the other hand, was based on noneconomic
factors such as education, kinship, and religion.
 Both status and class determined an individual’s power,
or influence over ideas. Unlike Marx, Weber believed
that these ideas formed the base of society.

 Weber’s analysis of modern society centered on the
concept of rationalization.
 A rational society is one built around logic and efficiency
rather than morality or tradition.
 To Weber, capitalism is entirely rational.
 Although this leads to efficiency and merit-based
success, it can have negative effects when taken to the
extreme.
 In some modern societies, this is seen when rigid
routines and strict design lead to a mechanized work
environment and a focus on producing identical
products in every location.

 Another example of the extreme
conditions of rationality can be found in
Charlie Chaplin’s classic film Modern
Times (1936). Chaplin’s character
performs a routine task to the point
where he cannot stop his motions even
while away from the job.
 Indeed, today we even have a
recognized medical condition that results
from such tasks, known as “repetitive
stress syndrome.” Download for free at

 Weber was also unlike his predecessors in that he was more
interested in how individuals experienced societal divisions
than in the divisions themselves.
 The symbolic interactionism theory, the third of the three
most recognized theories of sociology, is based on Weber’s
early ideas that emphasize the viewpoint of the individual and
how that individual relates to society.
 For Weber, the culmination of industrialization, rationalization,
and the like results in what he referred to as the iron cage, in
which the individual is trapped by institutions and
bureaucracy.
 This leads to a sense of “disenchantment of the world,” a
phrase Weber used to describe the final condition of
humanity.

 In a rationalized, modern society, we have
supermarkets instead of family-owned stores.
 We have chain restaurants instead of local eateries.
 Superstores that offer a multitude of merchandise have
replaced independent businesses that focused on one
product line, such as hardware, groceries, automotive
repair, or clothing.
 Shopping malls offer retail stores, restaurants, fitness
centers, even condominiums.
 This change may be rational, but is it universally
desirable?

4.3 Social Constructions of Reality
 In 1966 sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas
Luckmann wrote a book called The Social Construction
of Reality.
 In it, they argued that society is created by humans and
human interaction, which they call habitualization.
 Habitualization describes how “any action that is
repeated frequently becomes cast into a pattern, which
can then be … performed again in the future in the
same manner and with the same economical effort”
(Berger and Luckmann 1966).
 Not only do we construct our own society, but we accept
it as it is because others have created it before us.
Society is, in fact, “habit.”

 For example, your school exists as a school and not
just as a building because you and others agree that it
is a school.
 If your school is older than you are, it was created by
the agreement of others before you. In a sense, it exists
by consensus, both prior and current.
 This is an example of the process of
institutionalization, the act of implanting a convention
or norm into society.
 Bear in mind that the institution, while socially
constructed, is still quite real.

 Another way of looking at this concept is through
W.I. Thomas’s notable Thomas theorem which
states, “If men define situations as real, they are
real in their consequences” (Thomas and
Thomas 1928).
 That is, people’s behavior can be determined by
their subjective construction of reality rather than
by objective reality.
 For example, a teenager who is repeatedly given
a label—overachiever, player, bum—might live
up to the term even though it initially wasn’t a
part of his character.

 Like Berger and Luckmann’s description of habitualization, Thomas states that our
moral codes and social norms are created by “successive definitions of the
situation.”
 This concept is defined by sociologist Robert K. Merton as a self-fulfilling
prophecy.
 Merton explains that with a self-fulfilling prophecy, even a false idea can become
true if it is acted upon.
 One example he gives is of a “bank run.”
 Say for some reason, a number of people falsely fear that their bank is soon to be
bankrupt.
 Because of this false notion, people run to their bank and demand all their cash at
once.
 As banks rarely, if ever, have that much money on hand, the bank does indeed run
out of money, fulfilling the customers’ prophecy. Here, reality is constructed by an
idea.

 Symbolic interactionists offer another lens through which to analyze the social
construction of reality.
 With a theoretical perspective focused on the symbols (like language, gestures,
and artifacts) that people use to interact, this approach is interested in how people
interpret those symbols in daily interactions.
 For example, we might feel fright at seeing a person holding a gun, unless, of
course, it turns out to be a police officer.
 Interactionists also recognize that language and body language reflect our values.
 One has only to learn a foreign tongue to know that not every English word can be
easily translated into another language.
 The same is true for gestures.
 While Americans might recognize a “thumbs up” as meaning “great,” in Germany it
would mean “one” and in Japan it would mean “five.” Thus, our construction of
reality is influenced by our symbolic interactions.

Roles and Status
 As you can imagine, people employ many types of
behaviors in day-to-day life.
 Roles are patterns of behavior that we recognize in
each other that are representative of a person’s social
status.
 Currently, while reading this text, you are playing the
role of a student.
 However, you also play other roles in your life, such as
“daughter,” “neighbor,” or “employee.”
 These various roles are each associated with a different
status

Roles and Status
 Sociologists use the term status to describe the responsibilities and
benefits a person experiences according to their rank and role in
society.
 Some statuses are ascribed—those you do not select, such as son,
elderly person, or female.
 Others, called achieved statuses, are obtained by choice, such as
a high school dropout, self-made millionaire, or nurse.
 As a daughter or son, you occupy a different status than as a
neighbor or employee.
 One person can be associated with a multitude of roles and
statuses.
 Even a single status such as “student” has a complex role-set, or
array of roles, attached to it (Merton 1957).

Roles and Status
 If too much is required of a single role, individuals can experience role strain.
 Consider the duties of a parent: cooking, cleaning, driving, problem-solving, acting as a source
of moral guidance—the list goes on.
 Similarly, a person can experience role conflict when one or more roles are contradictory.
 A parent who also has a full-time career can experience role conflict on a daily basis.
 When there is a deadline at the office but a sick child needs to be picked up from school, which
comes first?
 When you are working toward a promotion but your children want you to come to their school
play, which do you choose?
 Being a college student can conflict with being an employee, being an athlete, or even being a
friend.
 ur roles in life have a great effect on our decisions and who we become.

Presentation of Self
 Of course, it is impossible to look inside a person’s head and study what role they
are playing. All we can observe is behavior, or role performance.
 Role performance is how a person expresses his or her role. Sociologist Erving
Goffman presented the idea that a person is like an actor on a stage.
 Calling his theory dramaturgy, Goffman believed that we use “impression
management” to present ourselves to others as we hope to be perceived.
 Each situation is a new scene, and individuals perform different roles depending
on who is present (Goffman 1959).
 Think about the way you behave around your coworkers versus the way you
behave around your grandparents versus the way you behave with a blind date.
 Even if you’re not consciously trying to alter your personality, your grandparents,
coworkers, and date probably see different sides of you.

 As in a play, the setting matters as well. If you have a group
of friends over to your house for dinner, you are playing the
role of a host.
 It is agreed upon that you will provide food and seating and
probably be stuck with a lot of the cleanup at the end of the
night.
 Similarly, your friends are playing the roles of guests, and
they are expected to respect your property and any rules you
may set forth (“Don’t leave the door open or the cat will get
out.”).
 In any scene, there needs to be a shared reality between
players. In this case, if you view yourself as a guest and
others view you as a host, there are likely to be problems.

 Impression management is a critical component of symbolic
interactionism.
 For example, a judge in a courtroom has many “props” to
create an impression of fairness, gravity, and control—like her
robe and gavel.
 Those entering the courtroom are expected to adhere to the
scene being set.
 Just imagine the “impression” that can be made by how a
person dresses.
 This is the reason that attorneys frequently select the
hairstyle and apparel for witnesses and defendants in
courtroom proceedings.

 Goffman’s dramaturgy ideas expand on the ideas of Charles Cooley and the
looking-glass self.
 According to Cooley, we base our image on what we think other people see
(Cooley 1902).
 We imagine how we must appear to others, then react to this speculation.
 We don certain clothes, prepare our hair in a particular manner, wear makeup,
use cologne, and the like—all with the notion that our presentation of ourselves is
going to affect how others perceive us.
 We expect a certain reaction, and, if lucky, we get the one we desire and feel good
about it.
 But more than that, Cooley believed that our sense of self is based upon this idea:
we imagine how we look to others, draw conclusions based upon their reactions to
us, and then we develop our personal sense of self.
 In other words, people’s reactions to us are like a mirror in which we are reflected.

Chapter 4 society and social interaction

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